Builder of skyscraper forgets the elevator

The Builders of This Spanish Skyscraper Forgot the Elevator

The Intempo skyscraper in Benidorm, Spain—standing proud in this image—was designed to be a striking symbol of hope and prosperity, to signal to the rest of the world that the city was escaping the financial crisis. Sadly, the builders forgot to include a working elevator.

In fairness, the entire construction process has been plagued with problems, reports Ecnonomia. Initially funded by a bank called Caixa Galicia, the finances were recently taken over by Sareb – Spain’s so-called "bad bank" – when the mortgage was massively written down.

In part, that was a function of the greed surrounding the project. Initially designed to be a mere 20 storeys tall, the developers got over-excited and pushed the height way up: now it boasts 47 storeys, and will include 269 homes.

1. One word..

24. That picture makes me sad.

It makes me sad because we should be able to have real fuckin' jetpacks, not this thing that vacuums water up from the river and then spits it out so you can fly 10 feet over the water, never mind the big hose dangling down, briefly mimicking the appearance of an actual jetpack.

Yes, yes, I know, a real jetpack is horribly dangerous, aerodynamically unwise and would probably burn one's ass to a crisp. But still. Sigh.

7. How confident would you feel living in a 47 story building designed by an architect

who FORGOT to include elevators, and with project planners who didn't notice this little mistake. Would you feel confident that sprinklers would work properly if there was a fire?

Even at 20 floors you need an elevator unless you're planning to only provide apartments for young, health professional athletes with plenty of time on their hands, never have any visitors, and have no large furniture.

22. Even in my prime, I would never have made it up 47 floor stairway. nt

35. I hope those extra 20 floors or so don't overload the original floors

I hope those extra 20 floors or so don't overload the original floor's design limits. The article makes it sound like they got to 20 floors and then decided to add 20+ more floors. If the first 20 floors were only designed to take the weight of a 20 story building, I don't think I'd like to live there, besides the no elevator thing.

8. Rapunzel needs the job. n/t

9. Code enforcement

Dunno how far along the project got, but really, one is surprised that some sort of building permit/code enforcement didn't catch this long ago. The care little about most of the functional features, but tend to pay attention ALOT to things like stairwells, parking spaces, fire suppression, handicap access and ELEVATORS. (A public building around here pulled a fast one on them when they had sufficient elevators put in for the size of the building, and then reserved 2 of them for the folks on the top floors. There weren't that many on the top floors and it left the other floor woefully under served.)

13. Yeah, the reality is that they didn't redesign for larger elevator lifting machinery

and that was realised in January 2012. Which means their promotional material doesn't look accurate (El Pais isn't precise on this, but it may mean that some roof space that should have been available for public use has to contain machinery instead). And during construction they didn't have a 'montecargas' (automatically translated as 'forklift', but I suspect it means 'cargo elevator' here) for the workers until it was 23 floors high.

17. It just doesn;t have *enough* elevators

Here's the actual story. A 20 story building needs, say, 5 elevators (to pick a number). A 40 story building needs, say, 12 elevators because there are more people in it and the elevator trips are longer.

So simply adding 20 stories to a design for a 20 story building means you end up with a 40 story building with only 5 elevators.

And that is not enough for the traffic.

But the claim that there are no elevators, or even no elevators to the top, is just a lie. Not from you, but from the author of the article. I am not blaming you here.

"Not enough" elevators does not mean "no elevators" and never will mean that.

18. Did you miss this in the article...

"How did elevator access get overlooked? According to El País, there were multiple elevator problems — including a serious accident.

But the short version is that the original project was intended to be 20 stories. Then the builders decided to make Intempo 47 stories tall but forgot to properly rescale their plans. So the elevators are too small and the motors not powerful enough."

26. Yes, that shows cthulu2016 is correct

This is not about the elevator not reaching above the 20th floor; the elevators are too small - ie they have the capacity for a 20 floor building, not a 47 floor one. The more floors you have, the more people there are in a building, wanting to use the elevators at a given time, and the longer the average journey in the elevator. And you need more powerful motors for more people, and longer cables (if the cables are 27 floors longer, they have a significant weight of their own).

Google translation:
In January 2012, a new surprise was not taken into account the elevator shaft, as is well seen in the promotional designs which consist not typical rooftop spaces dedicated to lifting engines. "The space was calculated for a 20-storey block," tell the same sources.

These are not elevators that stop working above floor 20 (how would that happen?). They are elevators whose floor area and time of travel was designed for a building of 20 floors. Although construction of the 47 floor building was under way by 2009, and they'd put in the top floor by 2011, it took them until January 2012 to realise that the number of people wanting to use the elevators in the much taller building was going to be far more, and for longer journeys, and so the elevators will be over-crowded - and they needed more powerful machinery, which will take up more space on the roof, than they had designed; the promotional designs show the original situation.

Notice that El Pais says nothing like " they don't work above the 20th floor". If they hadn't changed the elevator machinery, they might not work at all (or they'd have a severely restricted weight capacity); they did change it, but the point is that the designing and building of the tower has been extremely incompetent, for years, which doesn't inspire confidence.

38. The Gizmodo title and claim are incorrect and highly misleading

"the builders forgot to include a working elevator" - not at all true. During building, the lifting capacity of the machinery had to be increased. "Forgot the elevator" is even more inaccurate.

If the title had been accurate - "architects have to install bigger lift machinery during construction, and elevators may be crowded in use" - then there would be no interesting story at all. The inaccurate title is there to attract clicks - and it works because the original is in Spanish, so few people will check it.

15. Shrug... my employer just bought a four storey building that doesn't have a working elevator

It is also missing telephone conduits, most of the 20 amp wiring, it is also missing the top two floors. Nobody can really explain why they stopped at four, but it is supposed to be six. There is a hole between the third and fourth floors for a fancy glass staircase that was never finished. Sheetrock was just hammered up around it.

Built in 2004, abandoned in 2007. We mostly bought it for the parking structure but will gut it and renovate it at some point in the future when needed.